Virtualization

It was suggested that virtualization with Virtual PC might be a solution to the problem of future hardware crashes (and re-crashes) making me unproductive for days on end.  First, the last I checked, Virtual PC does not support USB ports for performance reasons.  PDA and Digital Camera development is a lot of my time and requires those newfangled USB ports.  In addition to this drawback I like my programs to be responsive.  VS2005 is now very responsive with my new machines but Outlook 2007 (while I like the program and its functionality) is barely tolerable and can still hang the entire system for several seconds during a send/receive.This is after following the performance improving ideas from Scott Hanselman and others.  I still can't fathom how anyone actually likes web based email. 

Grant's idea of ghosting your machine once in a while got me thinking.  A fantastic backup scenario for hardware failure would be as follows: when you want to take a backup you use a tool (I'm thinking a new improved Virtual PC) and just tell it "build a virtual machine image out of my current configuration".  This would make one giant virtual drive and image out of all of your programs and files.  This file could then be backed up and in case of a catastrophic hardware failure you copy this image out of your backup and continue from your last backup from inside virtual PC on whatever hardware is available.  Equally swell would be the option (you would certainly not always want to depending on the age of your last backup) to take your work from the virtual machine image and installify it onto your real physical hardware after repairs were done.  Yeah, that would be great.

This may already exist but I don't think so.